


turn, turn, turn

by leiascully



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Autumn, F/M, Pre-I Want To Believe, Spring, Summer, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-22
Updated: 2015-09-22
Packaged: 2018-04-22 20:37:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4849685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/pseuds/leiascully
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She likes the way the seasons change in Virginia</p>
            </blockquote>





	turn, turn, turn

**Author's Note:**

> Timeline: pre-IWTB  
> A/N: Title is from that song. Written for the X-Files Writing Challenge.  
> Disclaimer: _The X-Files_ and all related characters are the property of Chris Carter, 1013 Productions, and Fox Studios. No profit is made from this work and no infringement is intended.

She likes the way the seasons change in Virginia. They spent months in the desert and she never grew accustomed to it. The days were always hot, the nights were always cold. The dust was constant. It was glorious, of course, in the moments after the rain, when everything bloomed in a frenzy of glorious color, but then it was only the desert again, eternal and bleak. The house they find in Virginia is unremarkable, but there are trees. The grass needs cutting in the summer and dies in the winter. Autumn rain plasters red leaves to their bedroom window. She is happy there. 

In the fall, she eschews her suits and scrubs and goes to the farmer's market in slim jeans and boots. Mulder looks at her at first as if he does not recognize her, and then gives her a hungry eye. She ignores him and goes on looking over the vegetables at the various booths, picking out apples and jams and local bread and sipping coffee from the roasters on the corner. They take everything home and spread it out over the table: potatoes and onions and leafy greens. Mulder chops the onions, because they always make her weep, and they make soup with a chicken from the farmer down the road. He eyes the leftovers suspiciously, the jellied broth, but they perfect their recipe as rain patters on the porch roof. He tugs off her boots for her and peels her out of her jeans. She likes the chill of the air on her skin and then the warmth of his lips. She likes the way he sheds his sweater as the afternoon warms and the sunlight pools on the floor.

He makes apple hand pies while she is at work; she comes home from the hospital still in her scrubs, too weary to change, and opens the door to a waft of heat and cinnamon and sugar. 

"Oh, Mulder," she says, her voice melting the way the apple slices do between the pastry layers.

"I made you a little somethin'," he says, pride as warm as cloves in his voice. "Come here, Scully."

She lets him pull her onto his lap and feed her pinched off bits of pie. She drops her head onto his shoulder and just rests there for a moment, wrapped in the comfort of being at home with him. He seems happy. He seems productive. Maybe this will work, she thinks. Maybe this unremarkable house will become remarkable, become their sanctuary, a home without a history of blood or prying eyes. 

She stands at the sink later, gazing out the window at the grey fields, and he puts his arms around her and his chin on her shoulder.

"What are you thinking?" he murmurs.

"I was thinking we should carve pumpkins," she says, rubbing her cheek against his. "I always wanted to when I was little, but we never did." 

"You're missing out," he says, and the next day comes home with an assortment of pumpkins, large and small, and they sit on the porch and scoop out the stringy orange guts. She carves an alien face into one of hers just to see him smile with delight. They group their pumpkins together on the porch steps and light candles. Her nose is full of the smell of pumpkin cooking. They stand in the driveway and watch the lights flicker. There will be no trick-or-treaters, not as removed as they are from the cluster of houses in the town, but there is something comfortable about these lanterns anyway, the way they illuminate the dark as best as they can. The light is just about sufficient to stop a person from falling down the porch steps, but they glow all the same.

Winter is harder. The snow piles up and up. Mulder shovels until his back aches. Scully digs her thumbs into his muscles, naming them for him, relishing the new definition at the same time that she chides him for not protecting his lower back. They are not as young as they used to be. He cannot use his body with the same abandon. She, however, is happy to pretend in bed that they will never age, that there are no twinges. Years later, her freedom to touch him as much as she wants is still unreal. 

They cuddle in front of the fireplace. He reads her excerpts from the book he is working on and she half-listens, soothed by the sound of his voice. It is difficult to go through residency again, after abbreviating her first attempt at a career in medicine. It is strange to be working with the living instead of the dead, and stranger to be working with children. They cannot always articulate what hurts, and their parents wring their hands or shout at her sometimes if she cannot diagnose with a glance. But it's a small town; the yellers always bring her something, abashed, a few flowers or a loaf of bread to say that they're sorry without saying it, to mend fences. Good fences make good neighbors, she thinks, and wonders what the acres of solitude around their house make them. 

Mulder makes casseroles and learns to do pot roast. She forks up carrots and parsnips, needing the richness of root vegetables and beef broth to sustain her against the chill in the air. At night, they curl up like spoons underneath a down comforter and a quilt they bought at the craft fair. Scully is amazed they ever went to such a thing, her and Mulder, browsing among rustic chairs while their Armani and their Hugo Boss hung in closets somewhere, probably auctioned off by now. They tried to close out the debts of their old life, but there wasn't time to deal with all of it. Their apartments belong to other people now. She hopes that the bloodstains came out of the floors, and that the last traces of bile were scrubbed from the vents. 

She hates driving in the snow and misses the Metro and the plowed roads of DC, but there is nothing she can do. The world is weary of them, but they will not push their luck, not after all those years of pursuit. They have gone to ground. She will outlast the winter. She will watch the snow melt. 

Spring comes slowly. She thinks it will never thaw. Even in early April, there is still the risk of a snowstorm. She drives to work one morning in a haze of flurries that catch in her hair as she crosses the parking lot, shivering in the inadequate coat she wore in hopes that the weather would be merciful. Mulder is frozen too; he stays in his office longer and longer, not greeting her at the door anymore with a kiss and a spoonful of dinner. 

One day she looks around and everything is mud. They are not frozen, but they are still mired. 

But the flowers bloom, and the ducklings hatch and paddle around in the pond at the back of their property. She has to take allergy medicine. Mulder continues blithely to take long walks and track mud through the house and not sneeze at all. The farmer's market opens again, with broccoli and fresh peas and green onions and the first tender spears of asparagus. Mulder holds the basket while she fills it. She cooks dinner; he is writing. For dessert, she whips cream and layers it lavishly over tiny strawberries. Mulder eats and kisses her absently and goes back to his office.

It's just as well, she thinks. She is busy at the hospital. She has no time to devote to him. They move in their separate orbits around the house, converging in the bed. The bed is safe ground, hallowed territory. Neither of them will abandon that.

Summer comes in all at once: the sky clouds over and thunder rumbles. It pours for two hours as she does a workout video and stretches and wishes she could run on the manicured grounds of the Mall. Mulder is in his office; he looks up when he opens the door, but his smile is distracted. She closes it again and goes to stand on the porch and watch the rain sheet down. The driveway is a puddle. Little rivulets trace the contours of the ground. She lifts her hair off her neck and lets the breeze dash against her skin. The humidity never clears; the next morning dawns oppressively muggy and warm.

She buys zucchini at the farmer's market by herself, and tomatoes, and butter, and wishes she had time to garden. Mulder would have time, she thinks, but he is wrestling with words. He has always been wresting with words. At least now he has the leisure to sort out the lies, before he goes charging in like an archangel. She wishes he would spare a few hours for her, but no one could say that she didn't know, before this, that he would dig himself so deep into the work that it might take years for him to emerge. She cannot begrudge him his book. She is not the one who lost everything (although her sister, her son, the apartment that she loved despite everything). She, when the smoke cleared, when the dust blew away, was still a doctor, and he was just a psychologist without a license or a guiding light. 

She bakes a blueberry pie on her day off, just to see if she can. Melissa was always the baker, always the sweet one. The pie comes out of the oven hot and bubbling and perfect, and she thinks, at least one thing goes right, and then catches herself and wonders what she means. Her life is good here. Her life is fine. She and Mulder have made something here for themselves. They have homesteaded in their own peculiar way. She endured the winter, and she can endure this, the way she feels alone in the house even though everything in it is theirs, bought together, argued over, compromised on. 

She cuts a slice of the pie when it's cool enough and eats it on the porch swing, savoring it in small bites as she watches the fireflies blink on and off in the meadow. Mulder comes out, stretching as if he has been hibernating. She offers him a forkful of pie. 

"Amazing," he says. 

"The pie?" she asks.

"All of this," he says. "Sorry, Scully. I don't know where I was." 

"It's all right," she says. "Be here."

He puts his arm around her and she leans against him. The fireflies glint in their ersatz constellations, and the air is full of honeysuckle. This is not the life she would have chosen, but it is the life they have made with their own hands. If it's not perfect, at least they both know it's a work in progress, a little effort every day until the thing is done, until they can look at the sum of their work and say yes, we built this.


End file.
